The breadth of the company's ambitions is equal to the breadth of Zuckeberg's ambitions, infinitely large. Our global capacity itself to even understand where it will take us is as yet unformed, grasping, disunified. We still do not possess the knowledge, facts, data, insight, or common sense to even know which questions to address. In short, we don't know what we don't know.
By now it should be clear that a regulatory regime is now and will be essential. What it looks like, how it functions, who answers to whom are still only questions.
4
Sounds like a PR puff piece. HARD PASS.
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You say, “... the company’s recent emergence as an avatar for the risks of unchecked corporate power.”
You mean their emergence as the newest trendy target for the left’s hatred of big and rich?
2
Will it tell me why, though I deleted and cancelled Facebook and Instagram over a year ago and never go to those sites, this computer, my phone, tablet and work computer all have their cookies despite deleting them over and over and over? Will it tell me why I can't singularly block Facebook and Instagram cookies from my devices and be free of their snooping? I want a government that will legislate to protect the privacy of its electorate from corporations.
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Facebook is a force for good far more then the much smaller percentage of bad things that get understandably amplified. Zuckerberg is right about the idea that a global platform will always have some bad actors with nefarious intentions. Are we to blame Alexander Graham Bell for creating a medium for those same types of bad actors that has enabled drug deals, or any number of conspiratorial conversations? Or is the tool to call home to Mom worth the downside? The medium is here to stay, and we are all trying to figure out the best ways to adapt with products like Facebook. I believe that Amazon didn’t destroy small mom and pop shops, but rather the future destroyed those businesses. If anything, I believe Zuckerberg is doing his best to create a platform that is profitable for the company and shareholders, and he understands that being seen as a force for good also serves both the community and the company. When I go on my Facebook feed, I connect with people that I care about in ways that were unfathomable 20 years ago. I see inspirational quotes, and I find people that share my passions or open me up to new ideas. I applaud Zuckerberg for growing up under our very wide eyes...and I accept that the good far outweighs the bad.
4
What do we expect? An invitation into a highly confidential corporate culture at the very top of the tech food chain, comes with a "say nice things about us" nod of understanding. A little bit of critical reporting gives us the impression of hard hitting reporting, but hanging out for years w Zuck & Co comes with a price tag of sugar coating.
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Maybe this illustrates yet another example of American corporate self-delusion more than any Silicon Valley mythologizing. Like the tobacco and oil giants before it, Facebook justifies its own predatory and damaging practices in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Except what Facebook is polluting is the world's information stream. Without good information, reason and therefore democracy's self-righting mechanism cannot function.
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@Zabadoh
Well now, I’d rather winnow out the bad information myself than be restricted to Zabadoh from San Francisco’s “good information.”
It’s called free speech.
1
"Nor does the book examine the company’s outsize role in the surveillance economy. That is partly because Levy accepts Zuckerberg’s narrow view of privacy as the control individuals have over the personal information they choose to share. “People think that we’ve eroded [privacy] or contributed to eroding it,” Zuckerberg tells him in their last interview. “I would actually argue we have done privacy innovations, which have given people new types of private or semiprivate spaces in which they can come together and express themselves.” Welcome to Denial 1010, folks. Glad I deleted that website two years ago.
22
We either have a society that believes in free speech, or we don’t. Censorship — whether of Facebook and other social platforms, newspapers, magazines, TV networks, cable outlets, etc. — cannot be tolerated, period. For all the pain it may sometimes cause, free speech is still the law of our land. Thank God.
4
@Joe Gagen Free speech has nothing to do with Facebook or other tech companies.
11
Read Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshona Zuboff to fully understand the predatory and exploitive aims of Facebook, and why it's fundamental business model is the problem, not a few "bad actors" who mis-use Facebook.
17
"The fish rots from the head down". I watched the Facebook congressional testimony last year, and was convinced that Zuckerberg was a duplicitous, power hungry snot. If he had an ounce of concern for our democracy, or his worldwide users, he would have addressed the problems created by the misuse of his platform long ago. Companies like Facebook want the power and wealth that they derive from their "inventions", or more accurately, the Winklevoss twin's invention, but are unwilling to accept responsibility when they are used in a way that harms people.
15
FB will go down as one of the worst events in all of history. For starters it is the leading advocate for the Lemming-azation of the human race. Talk about Frankenstein, Zuck has incorporated every feature an overlord could wish for. Building out the largest surveillance machine known, or unknown to the human race.
It is a shame that FB is headed by Zuck, he could have created the most powerful tool for human advancement ever.
Instead he oriented the operation to exploit every human weakness known in the pursuit of money and power.
Tragic
32
No difference between Zuckerberg and Trump. Their final motive is equal
7
Last week, I was put in Facebook jail for saying "Americans are stupid". They decided that the statement was "hate speech." However, I have reported postings saying "Islam should be banned and mosques should be burned" and FB determined that such statements do not go against their "community standards". If there is any clearer evidence of the corruption of Zuckerberg, I don't know what is. He, and his platform, are a direct threat to American democracy.
15
Seems like a pretty weak book. Let me know when the other half is written.
11
Not meaningful to call Caesar Augustus a “particularly authoritarian Roman emperor”—but he was the founder of a new world order and one built on some new lies.
1
That is one unfortunate haircut.
16
@tee
A hair-don't once sported by Caesar Augustus.
5
There is absolutely no question that Zuckerberg bit off way more than he can chew. He's just an arrogant punk with so little regard for other people. He treats people on FB with such contempt that he allows doctored information to be distributed freely. FB needs to be broken up and Zuckerberg sent to exile.
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